Atari Sketches of Laptops and Wikipedia from 1982 - <AUTHOR> http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2012/04/these_drawings_date_from_1982.html <comment><USER2> "we completely missed the most important aspect of the network -- that it was going to connect people to other people."

I find this to be far the most interesting part of this article. Why was it that they missed this aspect? Was it just something they overlooked, or was it that people could not envision connecting with each other through technology?

Interesting to think about.

<comment><USER3> I think it's because back in the day, the mainframe mentality was predominant. Sit at a terminal, make the computer do something, and get the results back. In 1982, nobody thought email would become a mainstream form of communication, and CompuServe had recently introduced the first chat room.

<comment><USER4> Also, TV and radio broadcasts formed a huge part of the mental model for how media was created and distributed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wikipedia specifically is a wiki -- for all the pros and cons. These slides don't actually hint that it's user createable/editable per se, any more than radio is. It's an online encyclopedia/news service. Aside from that, quite amazing.

<comment><USER6> The collective knowledge/social aspect always seems to be missing from these "glimpses of the future". Hell even as recent as the birth of youtube there was skepticism over whether average people would be contributing videos or if it would just become a repository for traditional publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A father reminisces with his son about '60's Rock and Roll, calling up footage from the Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show from the Intelligent Encyclopedia"

They didn't figure on copyright being locked for very many years?

Also, the future is all-white. (Unless you're in Japan.) That wouldn't happen today.

<comment><USER8> I must admit, if I were to draw pictures of the future I might forget putting black people into it, too. Obviously if I were to think about the future somewhere else, I might remember, but where I live (Germany) it just isn't so common to bump into non-white people. So it seems naturally that drawing them wouldn't be the first thing I would think of.

<comment><USER9> It is a relatively new trend* in the U.S. to be very mindful of diversity in PR and stock media. The trend has been to show equal representation of skin colors instead of an accurate representation of frequency. Now, this is starting to move to showing a greater number of skin color minorities than the color majority, due to market research showing additional positive response with the minority and neutral response with the majority.

*not near as pervasive in '82

<comment><USER8> Makes sense. I wish I had more diverse friends, but it just didn't turn out that way (yet).

<comment><USER10> _I wish I had more diverse friends_

[http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/21/14-having- black-f...](http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/21/14-having-black- friends/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To give a sense of perspective: 2042 is 30 years from now. I'm _really_ surprised by how much they got right. Even the earthquake warning system: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_\(Japan\))

It's interesting to note some of the subtle mis-predictions. The blog post already mentions the incorrect uses, so I'll skip that. Most of the technology depicted would be considered very bulky these days. Also, many of the non- mobile displays are small by our standards.

I wonder what mistakes our 30-year predictions will make.

<comment><USER12> There's probably some selection bias working here. I'm sure plenty of people predicted things going to happen in the future, and we only hear of either the surprisingly correct ones or the ones completely off the mark.

<comment><USER13> Atari Labs in particular brainstormed a _lot_ of things, some more on-target than others, so there are quite a few wrong predictions as well. It's interesting that it even existed, though. The idea, today, that a videogame company could host a basic-research lab like Bell Labs, MSR, etc., headed by a prominent researcher (Alan Kay was near the top of his fame at the time) seems almost absurd. Google hired Peter Norvig to head up a corporate research lab, but it's hard to imagine Ubisoft or EA doing something like that.

My favorite not-implemented Atari Labs memo, fwiw, was Brenda Laurel's suggestion that they design games for dolphins and humans to play together: <http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/laurel82_dolphinvideogame.html>

<comment><USER14> Some video game companies still are: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/13/2947088/valve-reveals- secr...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/13/2947088/valve-reveals-secret- hardware-project-wearable-computing)

<comment><USER15> By-and-large though, VALVe as a corporation is an outlier in virtually every sense from the rest of the gaming industry. They own 100% of their distribution, they're a developer that distributes for other developers, they're _immensely_ in-tune with their customers, their consistently open support of the modding community, user-vs-profit focused DRM...

Despite the fact that VALVe makes games, they're unlike any other gaming company out there right now. The Minecraft team is a few iterations and portfolio additions away from that same tier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me a bit of Slate's Lexicon Valley in their episode about Webster's Third (edition dictionary). It was to be the end of to end all as far as knowledgable authority goes. Want to know anything? Consult your trusty dictionary!

[http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/03/lexicon_valley_webster_s_third_the_most_controversial_dictionary_ever_published_.html)

edit: I believe it was Webster's Second that was supposed to be the 'cream of the crop'. This is discussed in the podcast.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a page from "Whole Earth 'lectronic link" describing notable networks from 1988.

(<http://i53.tinypic.com/2janfrd.jpg>)

One reason why people may have missed the "linking people to people" thing is the cost. I have no idea how a 1988 $ compares to today, but $11 per hour is incredibly expensive.

<comment><USER17> Worth reading a bit about France's Minitel, it was an amazing electronic network introduced in 1982.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel>

"Millions of terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers, resulting in a high penetration rate among businesses and the public. In exchange for the terminal, the possessors of Minitel would not be given free "white page" printed directories (alphabetical list of residents and firms), but only the yellow pages (classified commercial listings, with advertisements); the white pages were accessible for free on Minitel, and they could be searched by a reasonably intelligent search engine; much faster than flipping through a paper directory."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone else notice the kid in the classroom who is supposed to be participating in the Mars landing simulation but instead has his helmet off and is drawing an unflattering picture of the teacher?

That's one prediction that was dead on and will probably still be accurate in thirty years: kids will always be kids.

</comment><comment><USER19> > The couple on the left is taking an on-the-spot course in wine > connoisseurship.

"Look darling, it says I'm right, the wine that comes in bottles is better than that stuff you get in a box!"

</comment><comment><USER20> That looks like Notch standning by the bar.

</comment><comment><USER21> So any kind of online encyclopedia is specifically Wikipedia?

An online encyclopedia is easy to predict; a _user-editable_ one is a lot more difficult, and there's no evidence this source got there.

It's easy to count hits when you ignore the fact they're misses.

<comment><USER17> Geez, I'd be more charitable. Back in 1982, storage and bandwidth were so limited that even online encyclopedias were pie-in-the-sky so even thinking it was possible put you in pretty visionary company.

As for user-editable I can find two predictions which might qualify.

First, Vannevar Bush's Memex:

"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. ... The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected."

\-- As We May Think (1945)

Douglas Adams managed to predict the user-editable encyclopedia in 1982's "Life, The Universe and Everything": "most of the actual work [on the Hitch- hiker's Guide] got done by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices of an afternoon and saw something worth doing."

But he didn't predict an online one, in the series at the time, HG2G was a local e-book or database-type encyclopedia that was updated via the Sub-Etha network.

Vannevar Bush had some amazing insights in 1945 about the future direction of storage:

"The Encyclopædia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk".

<comment><USER22> h2g2 was also a user-driven online network/local encyclopedia that predated the wikipedia launch by 2 years (according to Wikipedia ;)). So, Douglas Adams even built it before Wikipedia:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2g2> <http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/dontpanic-tour>

<comment><USER23> Isn't it crazy that Wikipedia launched not before 2001? (And wasn't relevant till 2003.) It is so ingrained in my Web habits that I have the feeling it existed already in the 90s.

<comment><USER24> You hit the nail on the head! I thought of some other things that would have floored me 10-15 years ago.

* Ask yourself what you used to search before Google? In fact, remember Web Rings?

* How did you share pictures before Facebook, Myspace, or Flickr?

* How about the holy grail of watching videos online before Youtube (Otherwise known as the dark ages of Real Player)?

* Remember when you had to print out Mapquest directions to somebody's house? God forbid you missed a turn! When was the last time you consulted a paper map other than for fun?

* How did you deal with the mountains of spam before Gmail, or any other industrial strength spam filter?

* How about getting the internet on your cell phone?

* When was the last time you had to pay for WiFi? Granted there are some holdouts, like airports, but WiFi is practically everywhere. If you can get into a Starbucks you have access, for free, to the internet.

* How about downloading a 10mb file in less than an hour? God help you if the connection was interrupted...

The things we do today are astounding in both the scope of their capabilities and how much we take them for granted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think this is pretty neat in retrospect, but it seems to me it didn't do Atari much good.

Makes me wonder if all these "Vision of the Future" videos that companies put out now are equally as pointless.

<comment><USER26> I often think the same thing. Microsoft predicted growth in tablet computing, but borked the timing and technology.

It's not particularly useful anticipating a brilliant piece of technology if you can't capitalise on it.

<comment><USER3> Well not useful to you monetarily, but you can still enjoy the product that other people got right.

Augmented reality concepts have been around for a long time, and whoever gets it right will become insanely rich. The rest of us will get to enjoy it :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Lil Brother -- Open Source Client-Side Event Tracking w/ Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://bits.shutterstock.com/?p=277&t=42985403758

<comment><USER2> Cool! I notice that you have both lil brother and google analytics enabled on bits.shutterstock.com. Do you have any kind of a read on how they stack up against each other?</comment>


Show HN: Berlin public transport REST API (no key required) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/derhuerst/vbb-rest/blob/master/docs/index.md#api <comment><USER2> The public websites like vbb.de work well for me. I longed for a widget that always has the relevant timetable loaded, but then I don't wanna use GPS. A couple of favourites of relevant stations and routes would do the trick, too.

       https://transport.rest/stations?query=marzahn

dat .rest TLD

<comment><AUTHOR> > The public websites like vbb.de work well for me.

I intended this API mostly for web & app developers who want to combine the data with something else.

> I longed for a widget that always has the relevant timetable loaded, but > then I don't wanna use GPS.

See [https://github.com/JayBrown/VBBar](https://github.com/JayBrown/VBBar)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A 16-bit Forth machine written in VHDL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/inforichland/yafc <comment><USER3> Have you heard of the two process design method? [0]

It makes your port maps super simple (and can change them by editing just one file) and each entity consists of just two processes: one to update the entity's state on clock and the other to generate the combinatorial logic using procedural, not dataflow, programming. When you use procedural, you can step through it with a debugger just like with SW! Makes debugging much easier. Also, using records for the port maps makes the ModelSim waveform viewer much easier to use.

You can see an example of it in a MIPS subset I wrote. [1] Any file with a _r.vhd or _p.vhd suffix is written in the two process style. I'd suggest looking at the ALU and I-cache, they are probably the simplest and cleanest entities.

I like your use of numeric_std. =) I'm surprised by how few times I've seen it used.

[0]: [http://www.gaisler.com/doc/vhdl2proc.pdf](http://www.gaisler.com/doc/vhdl2proc.pdf)

[1]:[https://github.com/jevinskie/mips--/tree/master/project4/sou...](https://github.com/jevinskie/mips--/tree/master/project4/source)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have seen it, and I have used it a few times. For some types of modules, I really do like how it separates out the state from the logic itself; as a person who started writing firmware first, and then started logic design, the two-process method can make it feel less like software sometimes.

Everything I've read these days says to use numeric_std (I've read the reasons why, and it makes sense), so I just never even bothered using the std_logic_*signed libraries. I'll check out your MIPS project; I'm intending my next project to be a fully pipelined RISC machine :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this were to become a more serious (but still open/free) project, what is the projected speed, in your opinion, that can be achieved by a hobbyist with an FPGA board or similarly available technology, say by the year 2020?

I ask because this seems like one avenue to create a full stack open source/hardware machine whose security can be vetted by the community. I wonder if by 2020 we might be running your core on handsets.

On a related note, I wish I could run a USB stick that runs a ROM-BIOS burned into an FPGA stick. Is that possible today?

<comment><USER5> Is there any reason to trust closed-source FPGA synthesis and place and route tools any more than an Intel CPU?

<comment><USER4> I hear of advances in program obfuscation. They're working on improving performance. Whether they are secure or not, I do not know.

But if it is possible to obfuscate a program, I think it should be possible to create something on an FPGA that is secure and private.

<comment><USER6> Sadly, there's more in an FPGA than "just" a dumb lookup table for implementing logic functions. There's not _much_ more reason to trust an FPGA than an Intel CPU.

<comment><USER7> Sounds interesting. I thought most of FPGA is logic blocks, then there's some MCU that would handle loading the design, maybe some ADC and/or DACs, and then there isn't much more than this. The MCU, theoretically, could try to analyze your design and modify it, but that would require either a targeted adversary that knows the design or a good amount of computational power and fancy algorithms to analyze what's going on.

Maybe you have any links with a good further reading on that topic?

<comment><USER8> The point is there may be an additional, secret, logic block which allows malicious access to the flops.

<comment><USER7> There could be, but mustn't it be aware of schematics FPGA is soldered into? A secret block to just manipulate flops isn't enough - it must be able to be controlled by someone.

Well, in theory it must not, because it could detect "oh, this looks exactly like one of popular Ethernet cores, so I'll bug onto those pins and have networking", but this seems like a hard task. Or, well, it could be that every pin is hooked and a secret block awaits a specifically crafted code (somehow like port knocking), but I'm not sure this is a feasible approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So what are some of the possible things one could do with this? What remains to make it the basis of a interactive FORTH system that could be hooked to a serial terminal and used, e.g. in a classroom? (Would that be a useful thing to do? Or would it be better as an embedded node?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the unstated goal of this was to create a small, simple and fast soft- core processor that could be used to augment FPGA designs (<15% of a small devices resources @ 100MHz).

Honestly, I wrote this just to scratch an itch. I've always loved the elegance of Forth, and having stumbled upon ([http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/index.html](http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/index.html)) that, I decided to create my own, with the goal of having single-cycle execution of all non-control-flow operations. Having said that, one could easily take it, and probably fairly quickly implement the Forth interpreter and use it in a classroom if they desired. I guess the explicit goal was an embedded node, but it's fairly flexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does the performance compare to a Forth implementation on an mcu? There are cheap fast ARM Cortex parts available, is the "100 MHz 16-bit dual stack processor" part directly comparable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely it would be faster, as the Forth primitive words are implemented in hardware. The single-cycle words are: +, -, 2*, 2/, dup, not, @, !, >r, drop, r>, rot, -rot, swap, nip, tuck, over, =. Un/conditional jumps and calling a word take 2 cycles. Naturally, though, this only makes sense if you already have an FPGA in your design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> alu.vhd, lines 40 - <USER2>

          -- arithmetic
           alu_results.add_result <= std_logic_vector( signed( nos ) + signed( tos ) );
           alu_results.sub_result <= std_logic_vector( signed( nos ) - signed( tos ) );

This logic can be done with one adder instead of two. In two's complement, invert the 2nd operand and assert the carry in.</comment>


Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit Satellites - <AUTHOR> http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2013/07/hillbilly-tracking-of-low-earth-orbit.html

<comment><USER2> This is so. cool.</comment>


I Hated Golf. Then I Played It - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/07/05/40679533/i-hated-golf-then-i-actually-played-it <comment><USER2> This guy urged his sister not to marry a guy because he liked to golf? I'm glad this turned around in the end, but damn, that's "surely he's exaggerating" crazy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Golf is an exercise in self control.</comment>


Apple Is Finally Killing iTunes - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/apple-is-finally-killing-itunes-842750/ <comment><USER2> More discussion of the same topic, with a different article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065153)

</comment><comment><USER3> 9to4Mac has obtained some leaked screenshots. Unfortunately they are not very revealing.

[https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/29/macos-10-15-music-tv-app- scre...](https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/29/macos-10-15-music-tv-app-screenshots/)

<comment><USER4> Thought it was quite revealing as shows it's more just an update to iTunes and renaming of course rather than a completely rethinking of the app structure and layout. That's why all these killing Itunes headlines are odd since it's an iTunes update/renaming and moving non tunes related things to their own apps. If it were removing iTunes aka the ability to buy and store your own music that would be new app but I haven't heard about any new major functionality compared it current iTunes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait... So there will be a Music app for Win32?</comment>


Nokia's Richard Kerris: People Won't Remember Our Troubles By Next Spring - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/08/nokias-richard-kerris-people-wont-remember-our-troubles-by-next-spring/

<comment><AUTHOR> The takeaway ...

"The company's U.S. headquarters in Sunnyvale, says Kerris, now has a very startup-like feel. Even if things don't work out for Nokia in the long run, he said, "at least we'll have fun and go down trying."

<comment><USER2> Too bad his tenure at webOS was not fun for anyone involved, all the way down to app developers. His failure there is only "forgotten" because Leo's failure with HP and webOS was orders of magnitude greater.

<comment><USER3> And Leo's failures will also be forgotten. That's the point. The new cycle is so short and consumer memory so limited that it's pretty hard to have a meaningful failure that the press won't let go of.

Go read Nokia's history. They used to manufacture paper, then rubber products, tires, and footware. They've reinvented themselves and transformed the company a few times. That stuff has also been "forgotten"</comment></comment></comment>


Nike won't sell directly to Amazon anymore - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/nike-wont-sell-directly-to-amazon-anymore.html <comment><USER2> People don't mind buying from a vendor's site directly but the vendor should do their best to reduce the admin / pain of doing so.

Some tips I wish vendors would follow:

1\. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction.

2\. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something.

3\. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this.

4\. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city.

5\. Have multiple payment options (like paypal for example), not just credit card.

6\. Up front, tell them what you need from them before they can complete the transaction. Nobody likes working through an endless data collection wizard only to stop half way though because you don't want to give up that data or get bored filling things in.

It's really not that complicated.

<comment><USER3> I used Apple Pay on iOS to buy something direct from a vendor recently and was _shocked_ at how smooth the purchase experience was.

1\. Click "Buy with Apple Pay" button.

2\. Double click power button on the side of my phone to confirm.

I wish more sites would support it.

<comment><USER4> Then they should also support Android. Apple isn't the majority anymore.

Even if Apple Pay comes to others I won't use it. I absolutely don't think Apple has better privacy than anyone else.

<comment><USER5> There is a W3C standard for web payments. If the website supports the standard, it supports Android.

<comment><USER4> Did not know that. Thank you!

<comment><USER5> Slight correction. It's a candidate recommendation - not quite a standard.

[https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/](https://www.w3.org/TR/payment- request/)

And Apple implements it.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_web)

 _Safari supports two JavaScript APIs that let you accept Apple Pay payments from customers on your website: Apple Pay JS, and the W3C Payment Request API. The Apple Pay JS API is analogous to the PassKit (Apple Pay and Wallet) framework, used for Apple Pay in apps. The Payment Request API is a W3C candidate API._

It seems to be supported across all browsers.

[https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-js/reference](https://stripe.com/docs/stripe- js/reference)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazon sells so many counterfeit Nike products that I've been using Nike and Adidas' online stores for quite awhile.

Amazon is so bad when it comes to counterfeits that there are only two conditions that will lead me to purchase an item there anymore:

\- Either the item is listed as being sold by its original manufacturer and fulfilled by Amazon

\- Or I just need something and don't care if it's cheap Chinese crap

I'm sure with Nike officially leaving Amazon this will only get worse. But practically any other big brand you're still looking at paying full price for knock-off merchandise. I can't believe Amazon gets away with having their "head in the sand" to this degree.

<comment><USER7> Oh, man. I've ordered a couple of pairs of Adidas shoes from Amazon that wore out exceptionally quickly. I had been assuming that Adidas had been suffering from a drop in quality lately.

Now that you mention it, though, I'll bet I wasn't getting authentic stuff. I'm going to purchase a pair from Adidas directly and see if the quality is better.

If it is better quality, I'll be kicking myself. I _know_ Amazon has these kinds of problems, but I just didn't connect it to those shoes before.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget - there are often many different levels of quality within the same brand name. Your Target Nike athletic shoes will not be the same as the ones you buy at a Nike flagship store. Lower quality, poorer materials, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Manufacturers are moving towards selling direct to the consumer and, although this is an obvious progression, most seem to be quite inept at it? (@davidhyde has listed a lot of valid points).

That said, amazon's fashion/footwear is a bit of a hit and miss experience here in the UK. Multiple listings for the same product, poor quality own brand merchandise, branded products with very limited colour/size combinations, and so on.

I expected amazon would have smashed this by now but it seems to get worse and worse?

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure about that. If anything, Shopify's more recent success is due to an expansion of consumers buying online from sites that are not walled gardens like Amazon.

<comment><USER9> I agree, Shopify has had a positive impact with small-medium sized merchants. Big brands with custom solutions however are not very impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So in this world where every retailer does this I get to install N apps, re- enter my payment/shipping information N times, deal with N different return processes, update my credit card info N times when it changes, and have N questionably written systems know all my PII?

I honestly much prefer shopping on the Nike app over Amazon, but I'm going to go to Amazon to buy whatever I found on that app.

<comment><USER12> If PayPal wasn't such a crap company they'd be the perfect solution for this problem. Just enter your payment and shipping info once and get one click checkout on any site.

<comment><USER13> I'm curious. What do you not like about PayPal? It seems to be working well for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A couple of years ago Birkenstock did the same - for them it was about quality control and ripoffs.

It's interesting because any Birkenstock Amazon sells is basically an assumed fake one.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whether or not this is smart, I'm just here to highlight the obvious BS of this statement: Nike claims to be removing its product from amazon so as to "elevate consumer experiences."

ugh.

Fluffy Subjective Possibly wrong

I don't need a massive hero image of a sports star to order gym shorts or a gym bag. I'm just searching amazon for what I need. My "experience" is worse if I never even see Nike's products, not better.

<comment><USER16> "Elevate consumer experiences", huh? I also call total BS.

I'm not a sneaker guy, but recently tried to buy a launch pair of sneakers as a gift - only available by Nike's store. It was a _terrible_ experience with their storefront - crashing, erroring out, empty HTTP responses, app errors, redirect loops, self-emptying cart, etc. Finally got to chat with someone at Nike support after trying for an hour - sold out. They seemed completely indifferent to their storefront being a technical dumpster fire. Essentially, "better luck next time". No thanks, I'm done - there will not be a next time.

<comment><USER17> Sneaker drops are notoriously bad experiences due to how many people and bots are hitting the website/app.

I'm not sure your single experience of the worst case shopping scenario for Nike is representative of the average costumer experience.

Besides that, as someone who has bought Nike/Adidas gear on Amazon, it can be a very bad experience. Description information is often lacking, especially if you are trying to see if this is the most recent model or care about sizing information, let alone if it's going to be a legitimate product. And if it isn't, good luck being able to immediately tell it's fake.

I can definitely see why Nike thinks this is a costumer experience improvement (as well as all the business benefits too, of course).

<comment><USER18> I have very little sympathy for nike on their forced scarcity bent lately, they're only doing it to themslves on this bad user experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had a problem with counterfeits on Zappos.

<comment><USER20> > Why would anyone buy shoes on Amazon? They own Zappos, whose focus is > specifically footwear, and have a pretty good shopping experience. Never had > a problem with counterfeits on Zappos.

I think a lot of people kinda lazily settled into using Amazon.com for all/most of their online shopping years ago when it was clearly better its problems weren't as pronounced. Those people aren't even bothering to find or look at other sites, and just buy whatever's on Amazon.com. It takes some extremely bad experience or serendipitous exposure to change that habit.

I was in that boat until I had serious problems with the quality of Amazon Logistics delivery and went to a Best Buy and discovered that (for many products I was buying) Amazon doesn't have _any_ price advantage over physical retail anymore (and often its prices are far, far _worse_ ).

<comment><USER21> Me too. I actually have been ordering online from Best Buy and either getting it same-day or getting it in 1-2 days when it ships from a warehouse. There's no reason to buy from Amazon anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The news also follows the recently announced hiring of John Donahoe, former > eBay CEO, as the sportswear retailer's next CEO.

Hmm, I see..

<comment><USER23> The cynic in me sees this less as a change motivated by improving the customer experience, and more about Nike promoting their own walled garden.

To be fair, Amazon is the LAST place I would buy Nikes. Counterfeit risk is too high. Comingling inventory is the worst.

<comment><USER24> What in the world is a fashion-wear walled garden? I'm pretty sure you can wear nike shirts with Adidas tops, socks are like the USB-C of feet, etc.

<comment><USER25> Let's say a customer wants Nike shoes, has Amazon Prime, and does most of their shopping through Amazon. Before:

1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes

2.) Buy shoes

3.) Close Amazon

4.) Receive (possibly counterfeit) shoes. If low quality or fake, perhaps think less of Nike.

After:

1.) Search Amazon for Nike shoes

2.) Observe no Nike shoes in results

3.) Google 'buy nike shoes'

4.) Visit nike.com

5.) Nike promotes sweatpants/sweatshirts/is running a sale/etc on landing page

6.) Possible conversion (customer is drawn in by promotions; ends up buying more than just the shoes)

7.) Receive authentic Nike merchandise, think highly of brand

It's a couple extra steps and this is oversimplified for a generic case. There's also places it could go wrong, such as if Nike chooses to collect and sell customer/transaction data. But if executed correctly, the switch benefits both Nike and the consumer while only hurting Amazon. Seems like a win-win- win.

<comment><USER26> Except step 4 in your second scenario could also be "Visit dickssportinggoods.com" or "Visit finishline.com" or any number of reputable retailers that will sell genuine Nike products. Nike isn't saying they will be the exclusive seller of their products.

Nike is just no longer doing business with one (large) retailer who is apparently 'unable' to separate counterfeit products from genuine ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I listened to a great pod cast about Amazon recently. On it they talk to the CEO of Birkenstock and he discusses about how they no longer sell on amazon and why. Its a great listen: [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of- the-giants/id1...](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/land-of-the- giants/id1465767420)

</comment><comment><USER28> Pick your favorite designer perfume/cologne and look at the reviews on Amazon. (For example, Creed Aventus [1]). A large percentage will say "fake".

I can't believe any trademarked brand would sell on Amazon, given they do not care to control their supply chain. It's a lose-lose: unhappy customers getting ripped off, and name brands getting disappointed customers of their faked products.

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray- Ounce/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Creed-Aventus-Parfum-Spray- Ounce/dp/B06ZZGNMYD)

<comment><USER29> The problem is that even if you don't sell on Amazon, Amazon is more then happy to let counter-fitters crap on your brand.

<comment><USER30> I believe you're right. But that makes me really wonder why any pimply faced teenager in Kentucky, who downloads a dozen songs illegally gets the full hammer of the law crushed on him, but Amazon can get away as a mass distributor of fake goods.

I wonder if they're more careful in Italy or France, since those countries take a very dim view on fakes, entities that sell them and even buyers.

Buying knock-offs in Italy can cost you a fine of EUR 7'000[1]

[1] [https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods- fine-...](https://www.godsavethepoints.com/italy-knock-off-goods-fine- beaches/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Glad to see the counterfeit situation finally having repercussions.

</comment><comment><USER32> Will they still sell to Zappos?

</comment><comment><USER33> First Birkenstock, then Nike. I guess shoemakers don't like Amazon...

<comment><USER34> Any brand who cares should dislike Amazon. As a consumer, at least half of anything I order on Amazon is fake, and Amazon gives no indication of caring at all.

Hence, if I order a pair of Nike shoes on Amazon, there is a good chance I receive an absolutely inferior product and blame it on the brand. Once that damage is done, I - and a perhaps a portion of my friends - will never buy the brand again. Ever.

<comment><USER35> It's seems to me that this could be much worse than shoes.

For example, how am I supposed to know if the Sandisk flash drive I bought was directly from the manufacturer, and not a 3rd party who is part of an industrial espionage effort? How about a Yubikey?

This is likely not just a problem with Amazon, but it sure would be nice if they gave me an option to buy things directly from the oem, guaranteed.

<comment><USER36> For Samsung MicroSD cards, Samsung has a tool you can download that authenticates the card. I don't know the specifics of what the tool does, but presumably with proper use of cryptography techniques, it could be made nearly impossible to circumvent.

A caveat - I used the tool and it said the card was genuine. Afterwards I put it back in my dashcam, and the dashcam said the card was bad. I just had to reformat it in the dashcam and then it was fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


[video] Turing Tumble Review – With Tom Vasel - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZYmlcqk2Ug <comment><AUTHOR> Previously featured on HN at [1]. I've received my Kickstarted edition and starting to work the puzzles featured in the accompanying book. So far, a lot of fun.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450158)</comment>


27 great examples of blockchain tech making a difference - <AUTHOR> https://gocryptowise.com/blog/27-great-examples-of-blockchain-tech-making-a-difference/ <comment><USER2> None of the examples are convincing for me. If anything, a better wording would be just "examples of tech making a difference". Blockchain doesn't play a crucial role in any of the examples provided and in a number of them it feels like an easier solution could've been built without it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a big buyer of the hype but I do think there's some value in certain types of processes.

For example, where there's a strong need for multi-party audit transparency. So the supply chain one and the marine insurance one look quite interesting. Granted blockchain isn't the only approach one could use but it does tick a fair number of boxes.

But some are bewildering. Sensing bin fill levels I get. But why on Earth do these need to be on a tamperproof ledger? Who'd want to tamper with them? And what carnage would ensue when they did? Baffling.</comment></comment>


Tonnes of iron dumped off B.C.'s coast - <AUTHOR> http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Tonnes+iron+dumped+coast/7395723/story.html

<comment><USER2> I was on Haida Gwaii couple years ago with 2 friends. Pretty much every local we have encountered was very friendly and offered us home canned salmon for free. There were golden eagles and huge ravens everywhere. Ancient rainforests. I got the impression that the last thing Haida people needed is technology _enhancing_ their natural resources. The place just seemed perfect. Oh well, I guess there is money to be made, so never mind...

<comment><USER3> The depletion of salmon stocks goes beyond Haida Gwaii (for those who studied geography earlier, they used to be known as the Queen Charlotte Islands).

Chronic overfishing in both Alaska and the rest of BC has contributed to the dramatic loss of salmon population. I don't think the desire to increase the salmon population is in and of itself a bad thing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea has been around for a while, but I didn't realise there were field experiments going on. Basically, iron particles are dumped into the ocean which encourages a massive algal bloom. A proportion of the algae will sink to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the carbon. John Martin, an oceanographer, famously quipped: "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I'll give you the next ice age."

There's a better article here: [http://planetsave.com/2012/07/22/geoengineering-news- controv...](http://planetsave.com/2012/07/22/geoengineering-news- controversial-ocean-iron-fertilization-experiment-succeeds-as-carbon-sink/)

<comment><USER5> This is not a field experiment, it is more of a crack-pot scheme. There is very little science going on here. I suppose the most unfortunate part of this misguided adventure is that very little will really be learned from it since it was not designed as a proper experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: _The Guardian...reports that George's team dumped about 100 tonnes of_ iron sulphate _into the ocean from a fishing boat 370 kilometres west of Haida Gwaii in July._

From Wiki: _Iron(II) sulfate (Br.E. iron(II) sulphate) or ferrous sulfate is the chemical compound with the formula FeSO4. It is used medically to treat iron deficiency, and also for industrial applications._

So it's not like they dumped a bunch of scrap iron parts or old machinery into the ocean. This is a fairly common chemical compound with many biological uses.

<comment><USER7> > So it's not like they dumped a bunch of scrap iron parts or old machinery > into the ocean.

No, it's much worse. Chunks of scrap iron isn't going to have much of an effect on the environment when compared to finely ground particles.

> This is a fairly common chemical compound with many biological uses.

Water's a common chemical compound with many biological uses, but that doesn't make a tsunami non-destructive.

<comment><USER6> It's still less destructive than an equal-sized equal-energy wave of sulphuric acid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Carbon credits for dumping iron into the ocean? The artificial plankton bloom may absorb some CO2 but how permanent is that? It would be nice to see some research on that.

<comment><USER9> The basic theory is the plankton grow, turn CO2 in to plankton, which get eaten. The result is less CO2 in the air. How much less is an interesting question.

What I find amazing is how controversial this is. If you can actually pull a significant fraction of CO2 out of the atmosphere and return it to the sea, why wouldn't you do that? It would seem to be potentially a huge weapon to wield against global warming and relative to other ideas is both actionable and hugely less expensive. And yet even modest experiments are fought tooth and nail.

Its a strange dissonance that conspiracy theorists love but I write up to a more generalized fear of change. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.

<comment><USER10> If you can bring in toads to eat a significant fraction of the beetles that are destroying the sugar cane crops, why wouldn't you do that?

(Because: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia> . These are complex, poorly understood systems, and the results will almost certainly not be what you expected. This isn't engineering.)

<comment><USER11> Iron sulfate doesn't reproduce.

<comment><USER12> The point still stands - although you are in control of one variable in this equation ("iron sulfate doesn't reproduce"), it would still be impossible to predict the consequences.

Iron sulfate does indeed lack reproductive capability. But it attracts plankton, which is a wide category of organism - some plankton can reproduce.

<comment><USER13> So long as the end result of all these extra plankton is not worse than "climate change threatens human civilization", I think we'd have a net gain.

<comment><USER14> "We need to do something. This is something we can do. Therefore we need to do this."

It's a false dichotomy. There's probably a wide range of things we can do, and picking an option just because it happens to be there & feasible, regardless of evidence of merit, doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

Put another way, you _could_ cut off your hand to treat an infected wound. It's "feasible." But is it anything remotely approaching the best way? Furthermore, what if it turns out that artificially seeding the ocean with plankton is approximately as disastrous for the health of the ocean?

<comment><USER13> _Obviously_ I do not advocate doing something for which there is no evidence of benefit... We shouldn't do it because it is merely "something", we do it because we can demonstrate that it does _more harm than good_.

If there are _demonstrable_ benefits, then _"do the benefits outweigh the risks"_ is something that we must _consider_. To categorically strike out broad classes of solutions because something _might_ go wrong, _without even considering the severity of the possibility_ , is to advocate inaction.

 _Any_ solution to this particular problem is met with this nonsensical _"something non-descript might go wrong, so we better sit on our asses instead"_ mentality. What we should be asking ourselves is _"What solution has both the greatest good/bad ratio, and can be scaled enough to actually solve the problem"_. Things are _going_ to go wrong; to stop exploring a possibility as soon as we learn that something could go wrong is naive and if universalized will lead to our downfall.

<comment><USER14> _"do the benefits outweigh the risks'_

But that's just it: we have no way to answer that question. We can't say if it's a good idea because we don't even know if it's even going to yield good results, let alone what cost those good results come at.

I agree that we won't hit on some perfect solution which has no trade-off. But making a decision without even knowing what trade-off you're making could actually make things worse! Imagine if this does approximately nothing substantial for climate change, yet it kills off a ton of species. Now we're on a planet with an destabilizing climate and a substantially more destabilized ecosystem.

High stakes cut both ways. You can win big by doing something bold just as you can lose even bigger or sooner. And having people unilaterally try out their pet theories seems like a recipe for disaster. They'll likely be long dead before the effects of their actions are realized anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it possible we'll see noticable global cooling from this or is it too small?

Legal/approved or not, it seems like this will be a great data point and it will be good to have as much information as possible on strategies like this is global warming ever becomes a pressing issue.

<comment><USER16> For any noticable effects on temperature it is way too small. Similar experiments have been conducted by Scientists near Antarctica in the past (including international protest after it became known), resulting in big algae patches visible on satellite images (see the slides in [1] for examples).

[1] I'm referring to the slides here: [http://www.iup.uni- heidelberg.de/institut/studium/lehre/lehr...](http://www.iup.uni- heidelberg.de/institut/studium/lehre/lehre/Climate_Engineering/11_CE_SS-2012_Climate%20Engineering_Ocean_Fertilization.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the practice of ocean fertilization is illegal, how was he hoping to redeem the carbon credits?

</comment><comment><USER18> What an incredibly slanted article.

</comment><comment><USER19> Our first true James Bond villain

<comment><USER20> Greenfinger

<comment><USER21> The spy who slimed me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ya anyone got any links to more info on this process? possible damage? possible gain?

<comment><USER23> There's a page linked from the above link:

[http://planetsave.com/2011/01/26/iron-seeding-of-ocean- may-p...](http://planetsave.com/2011/01/26/iron-seeding-of-ocean-may-promote- toxic-plankton/)

Which says

"...while iron seeding does indeed promote algal blooms, not all alga are equal — some forms can be poisonous to other lifeforms. One such form of plankton — a species of diatom by the name of Pseudo-nitzschia — happens also to be strongly associated with a wide-ranging neurotoxin called domoic acid (DA). The toxin may be a metabolic by-product or perhaps an adaptation (survival strategy) of this planktonic life form."

"Given the proposed use of iron fertilization strategies to reduce atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidification, the authors caution: "…consideration of the potentially serious ecosystem impacts associated with DA is prudent."</comment></comment>


Internet trolls are not who I thought – they're even scarier - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-02/internet-trolls-arent-who-i-thought-ginger-gorman-troll-hunting/10767690 <comment><USER2> Quite interesting discussion on trolling at NetHUI in NZ a few years back. I don't have links but remember the judge involved in the kim dotcom case was there and said injudicious things and then was suddenly recused from the trial. (Unrelated to trolling as a topic but memorable)</comment>


Why not to upgrade to Snow Leopard - <AUTHOR>

Firstly, confession, I am a BIG Apple fan. That is until I decided to upgrade to Snow Leopard.
What a disappointment? Firstly, you don't really notice any better functionality.
Except, it is slower. It is continuously requiring you to force quit.
It is more like Windows?
Apple, what have you done!! <comment><USER2> It's faster for me. Did you know that it runs on 64bit now? Maybe you need to reinstall some of your applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you do a clean install (via "Erase")? [Just checking.]</comment>


Ask HN: Do you like watching commencement speeches and inspiring talks online? - <AUTHOR>

I love watching commencement speeches, and inspiring talks in general.
The problem is that there isn't anywhere online I can go to find them. A lot of them aren't on YouTube. Ted Talks is ok, but hardly comprehensive.
Do any of you love watching commencement-type speeches as well?
If so, do you share my frustration? Or, what's the best way to find them? <comment><USER2> Depends on the inspirational speech and the speaker's delivery. Most of the commencement speech or other inspirational speeches I've come across suck hardcore. A few TED vids are good, the Steve Jobs commencement speech is good, some other vids are good... but in general most of them suck. Its not so much the type of vid but rather the topic, delivery, and various other things that would make it good. I enjoy watching a good one, hate most of the ones I come across. That said, not a big frustration for me. I don't go out of my way to find them.</comment>


Boxee Forums Hacked, Boxee Devices Offline - <AUTHOR> http://forums.boxee.tv/

<comment><USER2> mikeknoop: no offense, but pacing a direct link to a compromised site isn't good. these types of posts should link to a screenshot.

<comment><USER3> There was a thread about nytimes.com getting hacked [1], where it was _discovered what appeared to be malware on the site to which the NYTimes.com site was redirected._ By linking to a hacked site, you expose everyone to possible malware or other targeted attacks. Sure, this could work for any popular content submitted here, but I think the threat might be higher for a hacked site.

A second example, would be where Facebook and Apple employees were likely targeted and hacked by visiting _iPhoneDevSDK, where their computers were compromised by Java exploit_ [2]. HN attracts lots of tech folks from all over the place (apple, google, facebook, startups, etc) and would be a ripe target, similar to the iPhoneDevSDK incident.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6288051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6288051)

[2] [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/02/19/facebook-apple- employ...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/02/19/facebook-apple-employees- visited-iphonedevsdk-where-their-computers-were-compromised-by-java-exploit/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like Boxee devices ping *.ping.boxee.tv to detect online presence. If this URL goes down (may be due to the hack) Boxee refuses to open up internet- connected apps on the device even if you have an internet connection.

[https://twitter.com/search?q=boxee&src=typd&mode=realtime](https://twitter.com/search?q=boxee&src=typd&mode=realtime)

</comment><comment><USER4> >Hacked by Shadow_Haxor

>Contact Me:[https://www.facebook.com/Shad0whax0r](https://www.facebook.com/Shad0whax0r)

GTFO.</comment>


Going Too Far: The 'TechCrunch Embargo' And Other Myths - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/going-too-far-the-techcrunch-embargo-and-other-myths/

<comment><USER2> "Do we break embargoes? Sometimes. Do we break embargoes even after agreeing to them? Sometimes (but very rarely). Do we agree to embargoes and then respect them? Sometimes. Do we refuse to cover some startups when they don't want to give a story to us exclusively? Sometimes. Do we agree to cover a startup even when we know other media were briefed? Sometimes. Do we turn away some startups and then cover them even more vigorously after we 'lose' the story? Sometimes."

Short translation: "Should you trust our word? Sometimes.

Does anyone else find it ridiculous that a company/guy can even post something like that? He's basically admitted that they break their word and don't keep their word at times. Maybe "your word" is not a big deal anymore, but it matters a hell of a lot to me.

<comment><USER3> It is a big deal. Sometimes :)

<comment><USER4> You may want to chat with your corporate masters at AOL before you keep talking. I doubt they'll be pleased with one of their staffers going around publicly saying it's OK to lie.

<comment><USER3> Hehe it'd be the first time I hear from them. Looking forward to it!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do You Want to Be Doing This When You're 50? - <AUTHOR> https://prog21.dadgum.com/154.html <comment><USER2> Unequivocally yes! I'm 47 this year and can't imagine a career more fun.

I quit a corporate job to start my own company to be able to spend more time building software. I do note differences between my 20 year old self and my 47 year old self in how I build products.

When I was younger, I was more inclined to fall in love with the tools (languages, OSes, editors, IDEs etc...) These days, I focus on shipping product more than the code and tools themselves. I do spend a lot of time customising my tools, but the objective is to make myself and the team more efficient, not learn everything there is to know about the technology. Although I do spend dedicated time researching specific technology areas. Particularly those that are of competitive interest.

Also, since I control the schedule and the products feature set, I can be more rational about deadlines and calibrate them to outside market pressures. So while the problems that the OP mentions: trawling through vast APIs etc... are definitely things I have to do, I have more control over when and how I do that sort of thing. That makes programming less stressful and a lot more fun.

My coding primarily involves creating the initial prototype to prove a concept, designing the high level architecture of the app and then handing over the APIs for detailed implementation and review to my team. This seems to work well for us.

But as an owner of a small business, I also have to do the other things that 'suits' do: Strategy, marketing, sales, hiring (and sadly firing) and managing. And some things that neither programmers nor managers do: running odd jobs, and making coffee for the team. Fortunately for me, I actually like doing these things (except the odd jobs part), so it doesn't seem like a huge burden.

Having the opportunity to code at 50 is a wonderful thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah. Ditto. 49 myself. I enjoy coding as much as I did when I was 20. Do I need to be learning everyday? Yep. Same as back then. And I enjoy it just as much :)

</comment><comment><USER4> ...well I'm 51, and I still like it, so I guess so!

</comment><comment><USER5> I did, and I still enjoy it at 63. I occasionally find it frustrating, and now and them I'm bemused to find out how much of a day can be spent writing

for thing in thingsource: thingsink.process(thing)

but yes, I want to do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> 59 this year, still doing it. Nothing else I could do would pay as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am! I chose C++ in 1986, and it has just got better and better. C++11 was way more fun than C++98, and C++17 is more fun than C++11. C++20 will be more fun than 17.

I feel sorry for the rest. Coding Java or Javascript would be a chore.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm about to turn 60 and I'm still doing it, so.. yes.

</comment><comment><USER9> 47 and building Yazz.com, an open source project, and also working at Red Hat

Hope to be learning still when I'm 50 and will be grateful if I get there</comment>


What Apple gets about competition - <AUTHOR> http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/2008/04/the-five-circle.html <comment><USER2> holy crap, is there a cliffnotes?

<comment><USER3> Yes:

"They intend to make money because of my desires, not despite them."</comment></comment>


Cloudup/browser-repl – command line repl for most major browsers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloudup/browser-repl <comment><USER2> Just a reminder that the text-based browser lynx is still available: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_\(web_browser\))</comment>


Show HN: I wrote a remote story estimation tool - confused-candle http://home.1358.io <comment><AUTHOR> This looks awesome. UI is great. The only thing is I would have to start a new session(which means share the link again) instead of continuing the same session for estimating the other stories. Take a look at Pointing Poker.

<comment> confused-candle Thanks for the feedback, glad you like it :) When you go to the next game, it automatically brings everyone else who with you in the previous game. Although, admittedly, it's not obvious until you've done it once.

Will look at changing this functionality so that you keep the same game id throughout multiple rounds soon. Like Pointing Poker.

<comment> confused-candle I've done this now, you keep the same game id throughout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This looks awesome. I love the visual style, and the fact that you use ephemeral rooms instead of sign-up.

<comment> confused-candle Thank you, that's great to hear! I built it with my partner and one thing we really wanted was simplicity and a low barrier to entry.</comment></comment>


Why Recorded/Playback Tests in Selenium Break - <AUTHOR> https://blog.automatedbrowsertesting.com/why-recorded-tests-in-selenium-break <comment><USER2> A core issue is the use of Record/Playback approach... something that Selenium itself has dropped long ago (Selenium IDE is dead, people, DEAD).

In my experience, once you stop trying to record clicks, often on elements that will dynamically change outside of your control, and instead use proper coded tests for locating UI elements like Selenium 2+ gives you, it's much easier to have both tests that don't break and tests that are easy to maintain.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, "programming" tests might be the most robust solution if you know how to do it - but it also can be a waste of _developer_ time. In the end, you spend your time on debugging the tests itself...

In my experience, record and playback can work well. Especially visual, screenshot-based solutions like Sikuli or Kantu are actually more stable then most developers think. And the beauty of them is that they can also be used by non-developers, i. e. "manual testers", so the developers can actually work on the main product, not the test suite.

<comment><USER4> That kind of attitude is why my entire career path exists. QA Automation is something that I'm constantly surprised people don't know exists. Product devs resent writing tests so we are the ones who do that exclusively.

As a counter to your experience I've spent a great amount of time stamping out issues with record-and-playback tests. They're a passable stop-gap if you desperately need testing and, for whatever reason, haven't written any. Sikuli is possibly worse, though it's been a few years since we last evaluated it and quickly decided against using it in any serious capacity.

Using manual testers as discount automation testers is a waste of everyone's time. They're the true experts in actual use of the product. I've seen them find more issues that from a code perspective shouldn't really be possible that it's given me an implicit trust and respect of their abilities. If someone wants automated testing it's another thing they're going to have to spend money on. Doing it half-assed is more than likely going to do more harm than good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was dealing with Selenium tests a lot. I noticed developers are often skeptical about these tests saying it is not reliable. I do not agree with that, I have proven in several projects that you can have stable and reliable selenium tests. Just like any other tests, it requires proper test environment and continuous maintenance. The most common mistake I noticed is using `browser.sleep` instead of `wait.until`

<comment><USER6> Any other advice you'd give? I need to get testing up to snuff in a shop i recently joined and part of that involves frontend tests _(something i 've not done before)_. I fear making unstable Selenium tests.

Skipping anything you feel is obvious/etc, do you think there are any noteworthy gotchas i should know?

Appreciate your input!

<comment><USER7> Not the guy you think (kristiangw) but I thought I'd jump in because I was in a similar situation

1\. the biggest bang for buck that we got was the ability to pinpoint which tests to run to exercise which feature. Use as many tools or strategies as you can to make slicing and dicing combinations of tests easy.

2\. Think like React and keep everything relevant to a test close to each other with minimal separation into layers. Initially, we split data into a data layer (excel spreadsheets,) UI verification and navigation logic into a package, and a very thin test driver wrapper which pulls all this together. It quickly became very hard to determine what to focus on when tests failed. We have now started migrating to Cucumber where everything is nearby so test failures are easy to debug.

3\. Write as little code as possible -- this is generally good advice for all s/w projects

4\. Distill UI actions into their lowest level components and expose them as primitives. By this I mean expose things like "open URL," "click X," "Put text there," "Check CSS attr" as primitives. After this, each test is just recipes containing primitives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Automation suites are a way to harden the software, so that even minor > changes will be significant and may halt development.

I find this to be the biggest issue. Specifically, the "best" time to write tests is also when the code is least likely to be stable!

It's easy to think "if we had just started writing browser tests when we had fewer features, we could have kept up with a testing suite". But that means your browser tests are constantly breaking and people just give up on them. The app eventually gets big enough, and has enough users, that you have to bolt on the tests later to keep bugs from hurting too many customers.

This seems problem seems to be way less of an issue with regular unit tests. I guess the lack of changing dom selectors would be a big reason why.

<comment><USER9> Indeed - automated tests introduce more friction because they are hard to maintain and to write.

So really, the best thing to do would be to make it easier to write and update automated tests.

Recording clicks is of course one way, but the tests are probably more brittle for it.

If you have access to the source templates, you could probably right up some kind of rudimentary compile time type checking and validation of selectors, so you could know when a new feature breaks something.

The best would probably be some seamless mixture of the two - record tests in terms of the templates, with the ability to detect breaking Ng template changes...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, that's exactly what we're trying to make! I think there is a sweet spot for building a better IDE for automation...

<comment><USER9> We're making a push for more e2e tests where I work. And we very much have a focus on reducing the friction surrounding these tests.

We've settled on _aiming_ to build a tool that keeps an index of selectors used <=> page/page structure. Then if something changes, you only have to update it once. So when you create a selector, it'll save it for that page, you can name it and reuse it.

Given that we have the source templates too, I think we'll try to validate that the selector will be valid. We might be able to even add tasks for the front end guys that alerts them if the changes they're checking in will break selectors.

Combine that will an idea for suggesting selectors based off the source, along with e2e script managent, it'd be a pretty slick tool.

It's a pretty ambitious project though. We do hope to make it general enough to open source though. We'll see if we make it (pun intended).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In terms of weak locators, I once wrote a Selenium-IDE plugin that would generate custom expressions. They were XPath-compatible (why throw away all those nice tools?) but the generation scheme strongly preferred using custom- attributes in the markup as the primary "signposts".

The goal was to make things a bit less fragile by allowing Devs to annotate markup, while avoiding retraining the screen-clicking QA or creating an entirely new locator scheme. This was back in 2010, but I think it generated expressions a bit like:

xpath=(((//.[@data-test-label='foo'])[1]//.[@data-test- label='bar'])[1]//.[@data-test-label='baz'])[1]/a

Messy looking, but it meant only a structural change to your foo/bar/baz structure would break the locator, or a particular change within the baz markup. Switching a div for a span or adding another nested div for some reason? No problem.

Unfortunately we never got to use it in production, the company was bought a couple years later and the new management wanted to skimp/dumb-down QA even further. I guess they wanted to buy results rather than processes.

</comment><comment><USER11> Selenium tests are just generally a pain - even when written manually I've seen these fail more often from structural changes to the code rather than actual breakages.

I might be biased, but QA in Production [1] is my preferred approach now that we have great rollout systems [2][3] and ways to do verification testing in production [4].

[1] [https://martinfowler.com/articles/qa-in- production.html](https://martinfowler.com/articles/qa-in-production.html)

[2] [https://split.io](https://split.io)

[3] [https://launchdarkly.com](https://launchdarkly.com)

[4] [https://logrocket.com](https://logrocket.com)

<comment><USER7> But a structural change could be a bug.

The iron rule of software is that changes in the product have a reason behind them. If your UI tests break because of a structural change, that break _should_ be anticipated while the corresponding story/feature is being developed.

In the past, when we faced test failures which seemed annoying and trivial, we discovered that the real reason why we never anticipated those failures was because we never know which tests to run for the feature or page in question. We are hoping to fix that by using robust, semantic tags for tests. So, where we used to have tags like @TC_123456 we now use tags like @Login_UI etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote a wrapper around Selenium and Cucumber to achieve much better UI test coverage without the overhead of writing and maintaining chunks of code (PageObjects and so on.)

[https://github.com/saiscode/8tomation](https://github.com/saiscode/8tomation)

Just a regular .feature file (with minor restrictions) can seamlessly interact with any webpage without needing brand new glue code.

The framework also supports parallel verifications. E.g., if you want to check multiple items on the target page in parallel, you can do that too.

//I'm using this for my clients right now

</comment><comment><USER12> Personally I prefer Protractor (wrapper for Selenium / WebDriver) to Selenium IDE: despite being officially advertised for Angular, it works just fine for non-Angular as well, and takes care of installing and updating webdrivers, and the tests are code instead of a wysiwyg UI.

<comment><USER13> There's not much sense in using it on non-Angular projects, as all it adds to Webdriver is stuff to work with Angular's digest cycle. Regular Webdriver should work just fine for writing tests in code as well, and you can use webdriver-manager [1] or selenium-standalone [2] to install Selenium and keep the drivers up-to-date.

[1] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/webdriver- manager](https://www.npmjs.com/package/webdriver-manager) [2] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/selenium- standalone](https://www.npmjs.com/package/selenium-standalone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the fact that tests break is totally fine. You should _expect_ them to break if your application changes. What you need however is a short feedback loop.

We use a combination of unit-tests for the things that are straight-forward to unit-test (UIs aren't). But for lots of things that unit-tests can't really cover so well, or for when we have to mock the entire universe anyway, we rely on UI tests.

I'm not affiliated in any way, but I can honestly say that Ghost Inspector[0] made things WAY better for us. Why:

* No more wrestling with capybara. Not having to constantly switch between the browser, test runner, IDE. Most tests don't take longer than 5 minutes to create from scratch.

* We run UI tests on our staging environment, and we deploy all feature branches to staging before they get merged to master. UI tests are automatically run as soon as we deploy staging. And they run in parallel. So they're quite fast.

* We plug the Ghost Inspector results into slack+email, so as soon as something breaks, we know immediately.

Fixing the broken test is usually very straight-forward, and our developers do it (we don't have QA). Even if we need to re-record a test, it's usually much faster than re-writing a capybara/integration test.

[0] [https://ghostinspector.com/](https://ghostinspector.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> _Attribute in this context would be something like html <input name="FullName"/> that is changed to html <input name="Name"/>_

This first example is weird. That change has a pretty big impact on the way the form works; browsers serialize forms using the name attribute so that change means the form data that's sent when the form is submitted is going to be different to what it was before. You'd get FullName=<value> in the form encoded data from the first input and Name=<value> in the second. I would expect a change like that to break a test.

If you don't care what the name is then don't use it in your UI tests. For example, use an ID instead. Using <input name="FullName" id="nameinput"/> you could locate the element using by.id('nameinput'), and then you could change the name <input name="Name" id="nameinput"/> and your tests would carry on working.

<comment><USER16> Not necessarily. For instance, in many (most?) SPAs, forms are just a... formality. Something to get your Bootstrap-based (or equivalent) CSS to look proper, but the actual form data is pre-processed in JavaScript and sent via an XMLHttpRequest.

<comment><USER15> Even if you're not using the name in the form data you're still giving it meaning and importance by using it in a locator - you're saying "find the specific element in the page that has the name 'FullName'". If you don't actually care what the name is then you should use something else, like an ID attribute.

<comment><USER16> Sure, I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment you're expressing, I'm just saying that today, HTML forms aren't as tied to the backend as they used to be.

Though personally I wouldn't want to have to start adding ids and names to things in the markup just for Selenium to find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm the founder/CTO at Unravel, where we're working on using machine learning to solve this problem. Unravel lets devs write tests using our declarative DSL and we generate the browser tests at runtime, using ML for element classification & expert systems to determine sensible actions. You can either give us explicit inputs or use predefined data profiles (ie, complete a form with dummy details for a U.S. user with a test Mastercard, etc).

The dynamically generated at runtime tests solves the weak locator problem, and it's smart enough to avoid inputing invalid values in input fields. We deal with page loading well, and we're working on being able to automatically deal with alerts (and other modals).

The result is browser tests that are way faster to write (because you don't have to worry about locators), and the tests are way more resilient. We're currently pre-release, but we're looking for companies and devs who'd like to be in our upcoming alpha.

<comment><USER4> Wait is there actually demand for something that...I guess powerful? Applying ML to Selenium selectors seems like some truly massive overkill.

Not to mention dynamically generated tests at runtime. I'm not really sure how that would solve the problem of a weak locator. If you're given explicit inputs and they're weak enough to break then building a reliable test from that seems a tremendous challenge.

I love that you guys are having a go at this problem. I do this kind of regularly. The claims of being faster to write due to not having to figure out locators doesn't seem to hold water though.

<comment><USER17> Well, instead of having to explicitly fill each field in a form, you can just say "Fill the personal details form" or "Fill the credit card form" and we'll work out what each field is and fill it with sensible inputs - either dummy data or data supplied by the test author. Since you aren't hard-coding each locator, and we determine what fields are present and how to deal with them at runtime, unstable ids, classes, & xpaths, and even adding/removing form fields can be handled gracefully (as long as the user journey doesn't change semantically).

We can also handle other common actions like "Login", "Search for _ipsum_ ", "Select the first search result" (or "Select the first product/hotel/flight/etc" \- that one's really impressive), "Add to cart", "Checkout". When writing the tests, we give you the list of imperative actions than we think your declarative commands map to, and you can correct us if (when) we get it wrong.

We also have some value-adds. Apart from the usual assertions (checking the page loads, looking for certain text or elements, et cetera), you can write assertions checking for the presence and correctness of 200+ advertising and analytics tags, and can included computed assertions (assertions that are computed from the context of the test). We also have natural language date handling, so you can write evergreen tests with commands like "Search for a flight next Monday" and we'll resolve that to the actual date to input into the datepicker. We're also working on malware detection (basically checking all loaded resources and outbounds like on every page we load for suspicious markers).

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's really impressive. Good on you all for putting in the work.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, but literally all the hard work has been done our dev team - not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I work on a (commercial) library that solves especially the weak locator problem. It wraps around Selenium to provide a more high-level API, while still giving you full access to Selenium. It's called Helium [1].

[1]: [https://heliumhq.com](https://heliumhq.com)

<comment><USER19> I tried that, seemed very impressive but for whatever reason it refused to fill in my login box. That was the end of that:(

<comment><USER18> That's weird. Any chance you remember what login box?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You need to set up a DSL for each feature, which is used to test the feature, so any changes to the feature must necessarily include the changes to the DSL, meaning that tests based on "adjust parameter x" don't break just because the parameter x config element had a revamp.

</comment><comment><USER21> The assumptions here are bad - what is a click on a screen that executes an action? Its called a command.

implement a proper pattern, and suddenly im locating commands instead of selecting dom elements which may contain my command.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find automated UI tests to be a massive waste of time in every shop I've worked that used them.

Just smoke test that all the inputs do something and unit test anything else you care about.

UI testing is an antipattern

<comment><USER23> I am on the same page, I used page objects and was adding Ids to everything with retry couple times before failing (state of art interface automation?) but tests were flaky anyway so I gave up on that. Just too much hassle for little or no return if interface changes. Let alone testing multiple browsers...

<comment><USER7> I was facing exactly the same issues with my automated tests so I wrote a wrapper to help me completely avoid writing page objects.

[https://github.com/saiscode/8tomation](https://github.com/saiscode/8tomation)

With this, your basic cucumber .feature file (with minor restrictions) can be executed without needing page objects. Take a look if you have a second...</comment></comment></comment>


What Would Paul Graham Think, About Poker - <AUTHOR> http://bryank.im/pgpoker <comment><USER2> I like a lot of the stuff you brought up about what separates poker from other seemingly similar strategy games. Like the aspect of real cash, which makes the emotional stakes and ability to remain rational more important.</comment>


RIM going cross-platform? - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/17/rim-extending-tools-to-other-smartphone-platforms-going-cross-p/ <comment><USER2> I think it's safe to say that most people simply think of cross platform BBM as being the most wanted potential cross platform offering.

Then, I recall RIM's lawsuit against Kik.

Aside from Kik, though, I think the obvious question would be: what about hardware sales?

</comment><comment><USER3> They are probably considering allowing Androids and iPhones to be hooked up to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server via some special software on the phone. Knowing RIM, this won't be released for another 2 years and barley work then.</comment>


Men Waste £2,000 in Fuel While Lost Because They Wont Ask for Directions - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/08/men-waste-fuel-because-they-wont-ask-for-directions-study.php

<comment> mike-cardwell Men drive 276 miles extra a year due to being lost Women drive 256 miles extra a year due to being lost

The difference is referred to as statistically significant. Doesn't seem that significant to me...

Doesn't everyone have a satnav these days anyway?</comment>


Protect software freedom: Support net neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/take-action-for-net-neutrality <comment><USER2> > "These changes will make building free software projects and communities > harder, perhaps impossible."

How/Why?

<comment><USER3> Say ISP A gets a stuffed burlap bag that has a '$' painted on it, with a note going "You should make another plan that charges X amount for access to Github, SourceForge and etc." from some big software company...</comment></comment>


DotCloud open-sources its websocket proxy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dotcloud.com/announcing-hipache-dotclouds-open-source-webs

<comment><USER2> Haproxy supports websocket. What are the advantages of using Hipache instead of Haproxy?

<comment><USER3> I second this question.

<comment><AUTHOR> To quote the github page [1], Hipache is "a distributed proxy designed to route high volumes of http and websocket traffic to unusually large numbers of virtual hosts, in a highly dynamic topology where backends are added and removed several times per second. It is particularly well-suited for PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and other environments that are both business-critical and multi-tenant".

Before building Hipache, dotCloud's network routing layer consisted of a large number of boxes running nginx, wrapped in a custom instrumentation and management layer which, among other things, generated configuration files of mind-boggling size several times per minute and propagated them across a fairly complex distributed system. If we had used haproxy, we would have had to adapt that ad-hoc instrumentation layer to haproxy - not a particularly pleasant prospect. Since dotCloud had reached a scale which mandated a redesign of the routing layer anyway, we killed two birds with one stone.

<http://github.com/dotcloud/hipache>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the github link: <http://github.com/dotcloud/hipache>

</comment><comment><USER4> load balancing websockets has been a pain of mine on sharelatex.com and I will have a good play with this.

However one thing that jumps out at me is the low number of tests. There only appear to be a few Acceptance tests. For a serious bit of software like a load balancer I would expect to see a fair few unit tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hipache is built on top of node-http-proxy [1], a nodejs library which implements a lot of the actual websocket logic. Most of the tests you have in mind are in that library. Hipache implements a management and automation layer on top of it, and although more tests are always good, in my experience full- stack integration tests are more important in that context. I am not the author, but I work at dotCloud and can tell you that Hipache was submitted to _massive_ amounts of integration testing and load testing before even touching its first production deployment. Obviously there's a long way to go before being as battle-tested as squid or nginx, but we're not talking about a week- end hack project either.

[1] <http://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for answering. I would still personally prefer to see some unit tests checking each function behaves as expected, this is not so much to prove that the thing works now but make sure it can be changed safely over the next few years so I can pull down the latest version with confidence.

e.g. getBackendFromHostHeader inside worker.js does a lot of things, if I were the author I would have it wrapped up in unit tests.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it time to take SOPA protests to the streets? - <AUTHOR>

We have collectively written thousands of articles educating about effects of SOPA. We have made phone calls and created special websites etc.
But, we are still on the same stream of funny cats and Lady Gaga. We may know the magnitude of effects of SOPA, but general public cannot gauge it, because they may very well misunderstand as, yet another "save whales", "drunk driving" campaign.
I think we can do better, when freedom is on the line. <comment><USER2> Occupy Wall St. arguably didn't do much to affect Washington, or the regulations that affect the firms that protesters were blaming.

I'm not experienced in these matters, but it seems to me like a wiser alternative would be to found some kind of Tech Lobby that advocates for policies that benefit the internet in Congress and educates members of Congress about the internet.

<comment><USER3> You will have to forgive my cynicism on this one, but industry lobby groups usually take on a life of their own much like a Union. The problem being that the money virtually insures that once formed, the lobby will live past it's useful lifetime.

As well Occupy did not do much to effect regulations because those in power do not feel the pressure to change. A group of people in the street does not generate the required economic or military pressure to regulators. It raises awareness, but it does not create pressure. The Occupy movement was trying to prolong the occupation to generate that pressure, but there are superior ways to generate that pressure more rapidly. I think the people trying to organize a tax revolt would probably have a larger effect should they be able to coordinate it, at which point the powers that be would feel the real need to reign themselves in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What we need is more direct and visual support from the big internet players. Imagine if Google restricted all the YouTube videos for one day and simply stated "YouTube's future if SOPA passes". Or if Wikipedia blocked all their content for a day to make a stand.

Although very unlikely to actually happen, these actions would get the attention of the entire public and demonstrate the seriousness of the issue.</comment>


How Soviet science magazines fantasized about life in outer space - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-space-graphics <comment><USER2> I'm struck by how different the art in the Soviet articles is from the attempted-hyper-realism in Chesley Bonestell, Bob McCall, and Don Davis typical in the west. The Soviet art is more evocative and poetic (or alternatively, stylistically what might have appeared in advertising in the west), while the US artists I mention made me imagine I could be visiting a toroidal space station or be in orbit around Io.

<comment> c-smile Well, these magazines were issued in enormous circulation numbers. Year 1933, you would keep number of colors in illustrations as less a possible to make them affordable, right?

In 1980ies, with more modern polygraphy technology, they used more rich illustrations, check: [https://www.tested.com/science/space/456670-incredible- space...](https://www.tested.com/science/space/456670-incredible-space-art- russian-magazine-tekhnika-molodezhi/)

<comment> orbital-decay _> The tankette, which would weigh not more than a few hundred pounds and would be radio controlled from the earth, would explore the surface of the moon and report its findings back to earth. Information so obtained would make possible the next stage-the mastery of the Moon by man in the next 5 to 10 years._

Unlike Khlebtsevich, most people behind the manned Soviet space program weren't so fond of the Moon back in 50s, though. Korolyov, Mishin etc believed that a manned Moon mission would be a mistake. They bet on the Venus or Mars flyby mission as the first step in the Solar System exploration, because the deep space missions clearly needed the ability to build large spaceships in orbit, and single launch missions would have taught them very little. In fact, N-1 was originally planned and optimized for assembling a LEO manned space station/spaceship (MPK/TMK) to be sent to Venus. AFAIK it was the JFK speech that made Politburo switch the target, at the worst time possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you find this style of art interesting, I recommend this sci-fi movie animated in Czechoslovakia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Planet)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading a book as a kid in USSR about some child inventing a rocket ship, flying to the moon and leading a communist revolution among the natives.

That book left a really big impression on me - it was truly entertaining.

P.S. Found it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon)

<comment><USER6> It's more like an "Aelita" by Aleksey Tolstoy about Mars :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Science or Science Fiction magazines?

<comment><USER8> That "Technology for the Youth" (Юный Техник) was magazine for teens with focus on technology and DIY projects. You can find them here: [http://jt- arxiv.narod.ru](http://jt-arxiv.narod.ru)

I've never seen "Знание — Сила" in real life so I cannot really comment on it.

There was also a very popular "Наука и Жизнь" (Science and Life) which was more serious popular science and technology magazine.

<comment><USER9> "Юный Техник" translates to "Young Technician", "Technology for the Youth" would be "Техника для молодёжи"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And the novelty is? I mean, everyone fantasized about life in outer space - why would the soviets not? Or is the novelty that it is amazing how the people that wrote those magazines somehow eluded the gulags? Because the answer there presumably is that they probably did not elude the gulags.

<comment><USER11> It's interesting because in the west we didn't hear much about what was going on in the Soviet Union.

<comment><USER12> Pity how much of that cultural content was lost during the post collapse years of the USSR.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Duolingo blatantly ignores users in favor of A/B testing - <AUTHOR> There is currently a very annoying "feature" that is pissing off many users and that has been present for roughly two years. This feature consists in "supportive" messages that shows randomly depending on your success or failures when answering questions. The message blocks the whole screen, interrupts you and patronizes you. You cannot disable these messages from the site settings.
Here are proofs that users are ignored when they report the problem: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/21679860 (2 years ago) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/24458901 (1 year ago) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33040003 (1 month ago) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33072610 (3 weeks ago) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33180176 (2 weeks ago) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33398782 (last week) https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33343246 (last week)
My only explanation is that they have an A/B test that shows increasing engagement when these messages are shown. Why they do not allow us to disable them from the settings on the website (but do in the smartphone apps), I have no clue (I suppose this is less than 1 man/day of work to add the setting).
Clearly there is room for an alternative free software solution that will truly empower language learners. <comment><USER2> I've gone through the Portuguese language program on Duolingo twice, doing all the exercises at level 1, then level 2, and am now on level 3 (of 5 max). I agree the owl encouragement interstitials are very annoying and I wish they'd allow users to disable it. However, I don't let it bother me.

Duolingo does change the UI a lot. During the time I've been using it, various features have come and gone. Just in the past couple months, it has changed appearance on me 3 times. It's amazing that they'll do that but won't provide a setting to allow you to disable something that's clearly and understandably annoying some users.

All I can say is that I'm glad it doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some people. I appreciate Duolingo and benefit from it for free, so can't begrudge one or two boneheaded features.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Clearly there is room for an alternative free software solution that will > truly empower language learners.

I agree. There is also room for a free solution that will give me massages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that you conclude that it's based on A/B tests and present this as a fact in the title when in fact you have no clue and are just guessing.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reaction seems a bit over the top. How often are you getting these messages? What is patronizing about them?

</comment><comment><USER6> If you think that's "blatantly ignoring users in favor of A/B testing" definitely don't look into what your average growth team does.

It looks harmless and possibly a morale booster for some. So what if you're not the intended audience? Close it and move on.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love to contribute to an open source alternative for DuoLingo. Overall I'm happy with it, but there's so much room for improvement</comment>


Finding Time For Startup Founders - <AUTHOR> http://infochachkie.com/360-part2/

<comment><USER2> I agree with the author that there is too much data but the conclusion is very accurate. Great leaders can evolve as the company evolves and smoothly move from being an individual contributor to a manager/delegator. If you want to grow a big company you have to learn both and more importantly learn when to make the transition.</comment>


React Native: All-in-One Guide for CEOs and Product Owners - <AUTHOR> https://ideamotive.co/react-native-development-guide/ <comment><USER2> From what I skimmed, the article covers almost everything from the business side. It lacks some developer's points of view, however, more content would do this document not readable. It's also pretty good writing especially in the times where cross-platform development gains more and more hype. ReactNative and Flutter are the future. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how much there is actual difference for React Native vs Native. With better and better phone components development speed / ability to test / debug will become more important then being close to the metal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article, touches on so many aspects of mobile development with react. If someone wants finally see how React app can fit into his stack, this guide will walk him through all advantages of the technology.

</comment><comment><USER5> nice info</comment>


AWS CloudFormation Update – YAML, Cross-Stack References, Substitution - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloudformation-update-yaml-cross-stack-references-simplified-substitution/ <comment><USER2> YAML is a step forward, but I wish that Amazon would give up on CloudFormation. It seems like it isn't a templating system so much as a bad programming language in the making.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it leaves much to be desired. What do you recommend instead?

<comment><USER4> Pick your favorite programming language (or say ansible if u really love more yaml, or ...).

<comment><USER5> Except that you can't do what CloudFormation does with just a programming languages alone or with Ansible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simplified substitutions alone are a much needed upgrade. Writing Fn::joins everywhere was not only error prone, but also time consuming and confusing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very excited to play with these new updates. They were much needed! It'll be nice to get rid of the duplicated logic between stacks. Also, comments!

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://terraform.io](http://terraform.io)

<comment><USER3> Do you use it? I've always been hesitant to add another layer of abstraction, as AWS already takes forever to push updates into CloudFormation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I use Terraform and like it quite a bit. Terraform tends to be quite responsive to changes in AWS land and `terraform plan` is incredibly useful. It's saved me from blowing away instances a few times.</comment></comment></comment>


Japanese craftsmen makes an old, beaten-up book look as good as new (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/04/15/japanese-craftsmen-strike-again-make-old-beat-up-book-look-as-good-as-new/ <comment><USER2> There are times I would prefer the reverse :)

But I guess that just means going to prop departments in film studios?

</comment><comment><USER3> Repairing the unrepairable in the pre-MacBook world.</comment>


Facebook Bars Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan and Others from Its Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/technology/facebook-alex-jones-louis-farrakhan-ban.html <comment><USER2> Current discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810897) (593 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I missed that.

<comment><USER2> It helps to check [https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active) periodically, currently that submission is the highest there :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I typically do a front-page scan and URL search. May have omitted / forgotten / missed this time :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course, they won't be able to be consistent. Will they be shutting down people who have spent years peddling lies, hate and conspiracy theories about Russians to west coast anti Trump liberals too? Obviously not.

<comment><USER4> They will do more than that. They will succeed in getting society at large to adopt the rules that solve the problems of their limited, private, superficial, and narrow speech platform.

<comment><USER5> It must suck to be a right-wing troll these days.

<comment><USER4> this stuff is giving birth to a troll renaissance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>